WASHINGTON – The Biden administration said Thursday it has secured 200 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, enough to inoculate every American adult, but warned President Biden that logistical hurdles largely mean many Americans are still unvaccinated. If not. Summer.
The additional dose is a 50 percent increase in the vaccine, and will give the administration the number of doses that Mr. Biden said last month that they need to cover 300 million people by the end of the summer. But it will still be difficult to take those shots into people’s arms. Both vaccines are two-dose regimens, three and four weeks apart. Mr Biden lamented the “huge” rational challenge he faced in attending national health institutions. He also expressed open frustration with the previous administration.
Mr Biden said: “It simply came to our notice then. “Getting vaccinated is another matter.”
The Department of Health and Human Services said Pfizer and Moderna would give 300 million doses each in “regular increments” by the end of July.
The administration is focusing on a step-by-step process. The government’s top infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony S. Fawcett predicted on Thursday morning that in early April, any American could begin vaccinating in the “open season,” which would increase availability outside the priority category.
“Until we get to April, I’ll say the same thing, for better words, ‘open season.'” “Today,” Dr. Fawcett said in an interview with NBC. “That is, virtually everyone and anyone in any category can start getting vaccinated.”
But the issue is probably getting a dose to people who don’t find them easily.
Mr. Biden has carefully avoided sinking his White House into criticism of his predecessor, but on Thursday he slammed Donald J. Trump took direct aim at what he said was a failure to create a process for mass vaccinations. The president, who said he promised to speak openly with Americans about the epidemic challenges, blamed Mr. Trump for failing to oversee the creation of a streamlined vaccine distribution program. “This vaccine program was in much worse shape than my team and I expected,” Mr. Biden said.
“While scientists did their job of inventing vaccines in record time, my predecessors – I will be very frank about it – did not do their job to prepare for the huge challenge of hundreds of millions of vaccinations,” Mr Biden added.
“It was a big mess,” he said. “It will take time to recover, to be open with you.”
Health officials from the Trump administration have pushed back those suggestions, pointing to hundreds of briefings that health and human services department officials offered to the incoming health team, including vaccine allocation and distribution.
Highly decentralized schemes for vaccine distribution and administration, once the doses were delivered to state and local health departments, were developed with career members from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense.
Officials involved in the last administration’s distribution plan said late last year that outside the first few weeks, when they carefully managed the flow of second-dose reserves, their plan was to send doses because they were always available, and never intended to. Dose to stock.
The deal for an additional 200 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine will help fulfill Mr Biden’s promise in January to increase supply to cover more populations. He then said the administration was closing deals with both manufacturers as part of its larger pledge that about 300 million Americans could receive the vaccine dose by late summer or early fall.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden said his administration has “now purchased enough vaccines to vaccinate all Americans.”
Dr. Barack. Nicole Luri, who was assistant health secretary for preparedness and response under President Barack Obama, said the vaccine hesitation could affect how some Americans eager to be vaccinated get their shots soon, but more supply means getting vaccinated. Have to work harder. People.
“We will reach more and more populations, and more populations will have to make an extra effort to reach you,” he said. “You have to hope that the supply is opening up and that there is still a lot of demand for vaccines in public. It’s really unfamiliar. “
The government has already secured 400 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna, both of which have been approved for emergency distribution – doses that were expected by the end of June. Mr Biden said on Thursday that the companies would now deliver them by the end of May.
A third manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, has asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a single dose of its vaccine for emergency use, a decision that could be made by the end of the month and allow the vaccine to be distributed in the first week of March. . But the company is still trying to show that it can produce a large-scale vaccine at its Baltimore plant.
Federal officials have so far refused to say how ready it is for vaccine delivery if it passes regulatory barriers, but they are warning Johnson and Johnson not to expect new doses of flooding soon.
Andy Slavitt, a senior epidemic adviser at the White House, recently said, “We haven’t found that the level of production allows us to vaccinate as much as we think we need to get out of the gate.”
So far, only 10 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine. On Thursday, the CDC said about 34.7 million people had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, with about 11.2 million people receiving the full vaccine.
The pace of vaccination has been steadily gaining momentum in recent weeks. The number of daily shots now averages 1.5 million, up from 1.1 million two weeks ago. At that rate, Mr. Biden’s office will easily fulfill its promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in its first 100 days.
State and federal health officials say the main obstacle to vaccinating more people at this time is a lack of supply. The administration is exploring any possible way to boost production, including a possible breakthrough in which Moderna will fill its vials in large quantities, potentially expelling millions of dess as soon as possible.
But Mr Biden has long faced a variety of productive barriers, including limited open space around the world to make more vaccines, and the fragile and complex nature of vaccine production.
White House officials have pointed to what they claim is their job is to increase their weekly vaccine supply by 28 percent but that results in the expected uptick in dose manufacturing.
Unlike the last administration, the White House epidemiological team is briefing state government governors on the projected supply over an additional three weeks, so state health departments will know better how to plan ahead.
And they have adopted a more aggressive approach to using federal resources to get a shot at a weapon. The White House announced this week that it is setting up five new inoculation centers, including three in Texas and two in New York, with the goal of vaccinating people of color in particular. The administration also said it would begin sending 1 million doses of the vaccine a week to federal-backed community health centers in the underworld neighborhood. A new federal pharmacy vaccination program began this week.
And on Friday the administration announced that it was sending more than 1,000 active-duty troops to Covid-19 vaccination centers across the country operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said it expects to set up about 100 vaccination sites across the country earlier this month and will spend 1 1 billion on vaccine measures, including community vaccination sites.
Sharon Lafrenier And Sheryl Gay Stolberg Contributed report.
